1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photographic processing method and a printer processor in which an elongated photosensitive material is sequentially exposed to images, subjected to development, and thereafter cut into images according to main cut marks provided at the boundary between each exposure area during imagewise exposure to obtain photographic prints.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, in a printer processor, an elongated photosensitive material (printing paper) is wound into a roll and accommodated in a magazine, and the magazine is loaded in a predetermined position.
Here, when a printing paper is subjected to print exposure of an image which has been recorded on a photographed film in a full-image exposure method, the photographed film is set in a carrier; printing paper is taken out from the magazine and transported and guided to a print exposure position; in the print exposure position, a mask is applied to the printing paper according to the predetermined print size or the like; thereafter a shutter is opened; and transmitted light is irradiated through the photographed film onto the printing paper thereby exposing the printing paper imagewise.
Exposed printing paper is sequentially positioned in a print exposure position and sequentially developed while being transported in an unchanging direction.
At the boundaries between exposed image areas on the printing paper, cut marks are provided. The cut marks are detected and the printing paper is cut at each cut mark to produce a photographic print.
In a conventional printer processor, a photosensitive material taken out from a magazine is always transported along its longitudinal direction, and hence the path length from print exposure to development is very long. Therefore, the physical size of the processor has had to be large and there has been an unsatisfied demand for downsizing without any reduction in processing capacity.
This problem may be solved simply by shortening the path length of the development process, that is development, fixation, washing, drying and the like.
If the transporting speed of the printing paper is slowed down, the path length of the developing process can be shortened, however, the processing capacity is reduced and therefore this is not preferable.
Since even if a unit area (that is, the area processed at one time), is increased, the processing time does not change but the processing quality deteriorates, it is conceivable that parallel processing can compensate for the drawbacks due to the short path length, but the required mechanism for parallel processing is complex and therefore no contribution to downsizing can be expected in many cases.
The present invention has been made in light of the above facts and it is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a photographic processing method and a printer processor in which a reduced size is achieved without any reduction in processing capacity being suffered by shortening the path length of the development process.